Bauhaus: Weimar, Dessau, Berlin, Chicago

This is the heaviest book I’ve ever lugged home from the library, a whopping 12 pounds. I was tipped off to it after untangling leads from the Rauschenberg hole I fell into, mostly curious about Josef Albers. Indeed, his lecture “Creative Education” was my whole reason for ordering up this back-breaking work (p 142-143).

The 600+ pages are a must-read for any art nerds who want to get their hands on primary source materials about the history of the Bauhaus, from its origins in Weimar through its move to Dessau, to its destruction in Berlin thanks to the Nazis and finally its resurgence in Chicago. There’s a whole section of pre-history docs that show the slow buildup to the movement out of the ashes of the Arts & Crafts school.

Walter Gropius’s recommendation for founding a school of this sort, from 1916:

Whereas in the old days the entire body of man’s products was manufactured exclusively by hand, today only a rapidly disappearing small portion of the world’s goods is produced without the aid of machines. The natural desire to increase the efficiency of labor by introducing mechanical devices is growing continuously. The threatening danger of superficiality, which is growing as a consequence of this, can be opposed by the artist, who holds the responsibility for the formation and further development of form in the world, only by sensibly coming to terms with the most powerful means of modern formal design, the machine of all types, from the simplest to the most complicated, and by pressing it into his service, instead of avoiding it as a result of his failure to recognize the natural course of events. This realization will, of necessity, lead to a close partnership between the businessman and the technician on the one hand, and the artist on the other.

In the entire field of trade and industry there has arisen a demand for beauty of external form as well as for technical and economic perfection. Apparently, material improvement of products does not by itself suffice to achieve victories in international competitions. A thing that is technically excellent in all respects must be impregnated with an intellectual idea—with form—in order to secure preference among the large quantity of products of the same kind. Firms employing manual workers and small traders have, because of their very nature, never lost touch with art entirely; to influence them artistically no longer satisfies modern demands. Today, the entire industry is also confronted with the challenge of applying its mind seriously to artistic problems. The manufacturer must see to it that he adds to the noble qualities of handmade products the advantages of mechanical production… Only then will the original idea of industry—a substitute for handwork by mechanical means—find its complete realization.

A small section of colored plates was at the beginning, including this Herbert Bayer (“Chromatic into Two Centers”), 1967.